Australian data centre companies have raised at least A$35 billion so far in 2026, according to a Reserve Bank analyst estimate reported by ACS Information Age, as the RBA lifted the cash rate to 4.6% at the end of September.
The figure is roughly seven times the annual average of A$4.6 billion recorded between 2020 and 2024, based on RBA research released in September. Five years at that old pace would add up to about A$23 billion, a total this year has already passed. The surge is landing at the same time inflation is picking up, and the central bank has started naming the AI boom as one of the pressures.
The money
The A$35 billion estimate is a 46% increase on the A$24 billion raised across all of 2025, Information Age reported. The estimate was reportedly described as conservative, which means the full-year figure could be higher.
The rates backdrop
The ABS said headline CPI rose 4% over the year to August, up from 3.5% in July, with housing construction and fuel the two largest contributors. The RBA board voted unanimously to raise the cash rate by 25 basis points to 4.6%, a 15-year high.
RBA Governor Michele Bullock said “the AI boom is also adding to demand in the Australian economy, at a time when we already have capacity pressures”, according to Information Age. She pointed to data centre construction specifically, saying the need for tradies and materials “is actually impacting” inflation.
The other side of the ledger is productivity. Bullock said RBA economists do not know when AI-driven productivity gains will arrive. RMIT finance professor Angel Zhong told Information Age that Australia is “mostly a buyer in the AI supply chain, not a seller”, adding: “We are paying for the AI boom now, through higher prices and higher interest rates.”
The toy aisle
One of the stranger lines in the August CPI was games, toys and hobbies, where prices rose 12.7% over 12 months. The ABS attributed part of that to “price increases in memory and storage components being passed on to consumers”, a cost linked to demand for AI hardware.
Not every category moved the same way. Telecommunication equipment and services, which includes smartphones, rose only 1.3%, according to Information Age.
Jack’s take
Nobody has shown that data centres pushed rates up, and inflation has plenty of causes. But that is a lot of money hitting one sector in a single year, and when the ABS is pointing at memory chips to explain prices in the toy aisle, it is a fair question to ask.